TURN THIS MUTHA OUT! It's the Alternate 1970s Albums Poll on ILX — Results Thread

(will take that back if/when Rock Bottom appears, also if/when Steely Dan turn out to be actually awesome)

We heard you're leaving, that's ok.

Steely Dan can be awesome, but not always.

left that one off my ballot to make room for some variety, looks like it didn't need my help anyway

14. Steely Dan - Aja (1977) [177 points, 16 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/1ovgoz.jpg

It's been said many times on the Gaucho thread, but I'll repeat: they wrote masterfully about ennui, dessication, and despair on Gaucho. I'm not sure what "Black Cow" and "Home At Last" are about beyond their instrumental virtuosity. I mean, they're pretty, I don't skip the tracks, but so what?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, June 20, 2008 2:14 PM (1 year ago)

Alfred if we ever have a few hours to kill together I will explain to you why this is a better album than Gaucho and you will agree by the time I get done.

― J0hn D., Monday, July 14, 2008 9:15 PM (1 year ago)

Aja is almost not Steely Dan to me. Aja is this amazing tangent whose heights were never to be equalled again. I recommend an earlier record to get to the truth of Steely Dan. Aja stands apart.

― Dave AKA Dave (dave225.3), Friday, March 17, 2006 12:20 PM (3 years ago)

Ooh, back-to-back Steely Dans. (Aja was way low on my ballot and Scam wasn't on it at all.)

Yeah, they were within a single point of being a tie.

i hope that was it for steely dan. i don't hate them at all, i even kind of like them. but in a way they represent the mediocrity of the 70s. the middle of the road, fusion, jazz rock etc. lukewarm, unintersting music.

FFS. I'm starting to mourn the great albums that these Steely Dan albums are stealing spots from.

That's all there can be isn't it? all the others were in the first 70s poll and gaucho is 80s.

But they so don't represent the mediocrity of the 70s

Can't Buy a Thrill was eligible too, but here's some inside info... it didn't make the cut.

fuck

Funny that people were assuming this was going to be an Aja/Tusk #1-2 lock.

Tusk might not even make the 100

I've never listend to Steely Dan before, but I'm listening to Aja, and WTF?!! People would actually vote this sort of fusion-lite, cocktail bar soul over, you know, proper electric jazz or soul?! This is the 14th best album of the 70s?! Is there something I don't get here?

114th

I don't get it either

x-p, same idea
don't forget the other poll, tuomas. so maybe it is the 114th best album of the 70s.

This kinda reminds me of Herbie Hancock's failed late 70s and early 80s pop experiments... Except that even on those albums Herbie was twice as funky as this adult-oriented bullshit.

People would actually vote this sort of fusion-lite, cocktail bar soul over, you know, proper electric jazz or soul?!...Is there something I don't get here?
Pretty much the exact response of very nearly every person upon hearing Steely Dan for the first time, including those, like myself, who grow to love them dearly.

Steely Dan aren't jazz or soul though, and they're not "proper" anything thank god.

Hit us with lucky #13 before I have to endure the commute through Chicago's magical grey slush. Please let it be something good!

Someone please explain this to me? Right now the guy is singing "learn to work the saxophone, I'll play just what I feel" to a backing track that sounds like a 5th generation faded photocopy of some actually good soul-jazz song. How is this different from Kenny G or Grover Washington or what have you?

I thought you were talking about the band Chicago

13. Neu! - Neu! 75 (1975) [187 points, 17 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/23kfdau.jpg

I bought Neu 75 last week and have barely listened to anything else since...the division between the more ambient stuff on side one and the heavier proto-punk side two works really well.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Sunday, July 1, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago)

Neu! 75 just holds a special place in my heart, ever since I bought that Germanaphon bootleg at Kims Underground (the pre-Other Music store) for like 25 bucks. I think in the end it's their best album and pretty underrated by those who prefer the first two.

― dan selzer, Thursday, May 24, 2007 11:51 PM (2 years ago)

First two tracks on Neu! '75 promise greatness - they spend the rest of the album not delivering.

― Deluxe (Damian), Saturday, October 22, 2005 4:01 AM (4 years ago)

I mean, I can sometimes enjoy this sort of stuff, it's not like there's anything wrong with it, but I don't get how this is a critically acclaimed album while those Herbie Hancock albums are given 2-star reviews.

Lady, if you have to ask...

Check the Steely Dan albums that placed in the first poll. The made the first cut for a reason.

The=They

Aja, for me, works as an auto-critique of the Dan - people always accused them of being what you say, and missing the poison, so on this one they buried the ice so deep, you need to think along with them to get at it: if you didn't know where to look then it does sound bland, 'lite', a few short steps from Chuck Mangione. Its not. It's record that, instead of decrying the numb anomie of its targets, lives it, inhabits it - and probably provided a soundtrack for them.Someone, somewhere, probably 'turned up the 'Dan, (because) the neighbours were listening'

xxxxp to tuomas

yay for the raincoats. now where's my x-ray spex?

I wish there more MORe middle of the road stuff, more soft rock, more commercial radio stuff, on this list.

I wish there was more prog on this list.

Not now, of course, because I've got poll fatigue, but someday ILM should do a real disco poll. xp

prog has been found guilty of being british, a cardinal offence for music on ilm these days

:P

pc gone mad

Yeah, I'm glad the Raincoats made it, even though I associate them with the 80s.

I listened to tons of prog as an American teenager, but kind of outgrew it. To the point that when I see adults talking about/listening to prog rock w/o irony and being 100% serious that I kind of giggle.

Mmmmm....Chuck Mangione. If Steely Dan were funky I would shoot myself in the head.

It's record that, instead of decrying the numb anomie of its targets, lives it, inhabits it - and probably provided a soundtrack for them.

So basically they tried to make a pastiche of MOR jazz-lite that was so successful that it sounds exactly like what it's imitating? I still don't get why it's any better than those albums that did this stuff without any hidden agenda. It still sounds the same.

Yay, Neu! After a two year hiatus with Rother doing Harmonia and Dinger forming the early stages of La Dusseldorf, they reconvened at Conny Plank's new studio to finish their three album contract. Side one is them as a duo, featuring Rother's lovely spacescapes. On side two, Dinger wanted to move to vocals and rhythm guitar, leaving drumming duties to the double team of brother Thomas Dinger and Plank's recording assistant Hans Lampe. They don't disappoint, blowing their tops with crunchy guitars, doubled-up drums and screaming punk Dinger vocals. Bowie liked "Hero" so much he named one of his best songs after it.

Steely Dan were the best band of the '70s, fuck aaaaall y'all that disagree, straight up and down

I just realised there's been no mention of Alice Cooper in either of these polls and it makes me want to cry a bit. Love It To Death through Billion Dollar Babies are all 100% classic.

I'm getting to really positively hate proto-punk, punk, post-punk, and krautrock.

^^^testing my resolve never to SB in anger

Except with words that just lie there until you pick them up and they cut your fingers and tunes that sound like they're doing that jazz lite thing until you start following them and they go very strange.

Its not the best place to start though, I'd agree

XP t TUomas again

I love Steely Dan but i've never cared for Aja.

12. Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) [187 points, 18 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/i4fok4.jpg

I'll defer to alex in mainhattan's "In Praise of..." post.

I hesitated to choose the third Eno album in this series (1973 may yield a 4th one though the second Roxy Music will be a tough contender) but I realised that what I like about Bowie's Low is its strong Eno touch on the mainly instrumental second atmospheric side. Eno on his own (plus guest musicians) in 1977 to my ears still sounds more adventurous and timeless than the dark and brooding Low. Which additionally hasn't got such a classy black and white cover.

Like Low Before and after Science has two totally different sides as the title already suggests. No. 1 is more rhythmic, no.2 is more like a soundscape. An album which stands in-between his earlier avant pop output and his later ambient releases. Two music worlds are juxtaposed and I find the result of this approach still as thrilling as in the late seventies when I listened to it for the first time. To be honest this is the only album I bought in that mostly dreadful decade for me which I still love today. Kiss, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, Genesis and Eloy were the bands I cherished in the first half of my teenage years. None of them stood the test of time. I can date back my obsession with music to the purchase of this Eno record which I bought in a record shop in Duisburg about 15 kilometers from my home town. I think I went there by bicycle after having read a review in Die Zeit which still is the only newspaper (a weekly) I read regularly.

It starts with the wonderful groovy piece No One Receiving. One of the greatest moments of Phil Collins. His reverberating drums give this track a light and almost ballet-like quality. A simple bassline dominates the song which is uncategorisable. Somewhere in between world, jazz, dance and pop. Weird and enchanting.

Backwater is even weirder. The piano is part of the rhythm section. Eno sings surreal lyrics about god knows what. The melody is in the singing, the instruments are following later. And then there is this handclapping. I hear some irony there and it sounds bloody good.

More bass wizardry on Kurt's Rejoinder which features Kurt Schwitters recitating one of his dada poems. Clever collaging.

On Energy Fools the Magician we enter soundscape land. Phil Collins hi-hat sounds like a triangle, Eno's "vibes" like a synthie, his keyboards like a piano, his chorus like a women background choir, Fred Frith's modified guitar (?) like a glockenspiel, only Percy Jones fretless bass sounds like a bass. Around 80 seconds in the bass seems to fall over like when you walk too fast and you lose the equilibrium. But then the music does not turn around, it goes on in its majestic calm way. Disappointed expectations. Altogether only two minutes but in those 125 seconds there is more happening than in the entire output of many musicians.

The next song seems to be the turning point. King Lead's Hat. An anagramm of Talking Heads with whom Eno worked later on, I think. More handclapping accompanies a trashy rhythm. This used to be my least favourite track on the album. It feels a little out of place here sandwiched in between two slow atmospheric pieces as it is very upbeat. When Robert Fripp's guitar solo comes just before the two minute mark my love for this song starts to grow though. This beautiful warm and fuzzy King Crimson sound is so perfect in small doses. Paul Rudolph provides some sudden bass chords which seem to act like a stopper but it goes on. Finally it all goes kind of electronic. Eno doing his "metallics". I hear the sound of champagne bubbles and I get very thirsty.

Side two shoots off (not really ;-)) with Here He Comes. As so often Eno offers us an earcatcher as the first song on a side. A languishing beautiful melody about a boy who "was seven feet high". After a minute the song intensifies itself by getting melancholic and even more beautiful when Eno holds his breath for a second and elongates the syllables by singing "coooomes" and then "bloohoohoohoo". What always astounds me about his voice that on one hand it has this totally asexual almost robotic tinge and then it can get so sentimental.

Julie with... ("her open blouse is gazing up into the empty sky") is the longest song on the album. Six minutes and twenty seconds starting slowly in a dreamy way. We are drifting on a calm sea. The first resolution (or dénouement) comes after two minutes. More drifting and a second resolution after four minutes. The gorgeous cruise resumes. I wish I had been there.

Piano time. A tiny theme. By this River is tenderness pure. The proof that beauty is simple. Eno's singing inevitably turns into humming. Words fail. The song was used in the German movie on RAF terrorism Die innere Sicherheit by Christian Petzold whenever the daughter of the terrorist couple left the doomed family to find herself. In Portugal on the beach for example. A young, innocent girl dreaming of a normal world outside of the hiding and the lying. It's a great film and an even greater song.

Through Hollow Lands is the track of this record that haunted me most in the late 70s. An instrumental which I taped in a loop on a C90 cassette. I listened to it for meditation purposes. Impossible to ever get bored by it. As there is hardly anything happening in it. No highs, no lows, just an incredible serenity. I never arrived to the point where my thoughts stopped. Patience has never been my stronghold.

Eno closes the album with Spider and I. Synthie plains going slightly towards the heavy. It's not bad but by far not the best on this stunning album. Which probably would be my island disc if I had to choose one Eno record. As it comprises the Eno before and after the accident. A watershed album with the watershed right in the middle.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Tuesday, August 16, 2005 4:03 PM (4 years ago)

I'm getting to really positively hate proto-punk, punk, post-punk, and krautrock.

― _Rudipherous

I'm with you on the last two. There is some of the former two I still enjoy.

Think I had this as my number 2 or 3. Second side is the best thing he's ever done.